Depends on who you are listening to and/or what studies you believe. However, yes, the marketing team has won either way because they got paid to do the thing, the sale itself is more or less irrelevant.

However, most studies indicate that a pirated game is unlikely to be a lost sale, because a person in the first world who pirates a game had a very low intention of ever purchasing the game legitimately. A much larger area of 'lost profit' is from regional pricing, where one region is priced cheaper, but then games are resold on the market for lower than the expensive regional price. However, without regional pricing, you do get into the issue where pirating is actually lost sales, because customers in poorer regions who would ordinarily pay for the game are forced into pirating because they are priced out.

So... The marketing team wins and the company kinda loses, maybe?

I'm not up to date on the data but if I'm not mistaken there's not all that much evidence to suggest a download of a pirated game is a lost sale

HAW